


Your Choice, and Mine

by petaldancing



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 08:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20386834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petaldancing/pseuds/petaldancing
Summary: Caspar has always seen the world divided into two: the ones he’s supposed to fight, and the ones he’s supposed to protect. — AU where Caspar joins the Blue Lions and Petra stays with the Black Eagles.





	Your Choice, and Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place post-timeskip but nothing directly spoilery?
> 
> Based off Caspar and Petra’s support (which made me hurt) and assumes that they never had their A-support chat because in-game, it only happens post-timeskip. So, spoilers for their A-support if you’ve not read it!

He hears Petra before anything else.

And it’s not her voice. It is the beating of a wyvern’s mighty wings, the high-pitched clash of iron and steel, frantic shouting. Their troops are falling back in a scramble and Caspar is nearly knocked over a few times from the wave of Kingdom soldiers pushing past him. He rolls his shoulders back and takes a deep breath. He must wade through a river of unmoving horses and soldiers before the shape of her is outlined in the rain.

“Flank them and take out the other wyverns. Leave the general to me.” Caspar doesn’t look back to his battalion. He knows if he takes his eyes off her, he’ll be giving her an easy opening. And this reunion is going to be anything but easy.

“Petra!” he calls out. He hasn’t said her name in so long, he’s almost happy, almost forgetting the circumstances they’re tangled up in. But Petra, focused as ever, does not flinch. In one quick motion, her wyvern lunges at him. Caspar’s axe deflects the blade of hers just inches from his shoulder. She immediately raises it once more in one swift motion to go for the other shoulder, and Caspar catches it in with his silver gauntlets just barely. He didn’t think the maneuver would work and had been prepared to lose a hand. Only up close does he realise that Petra’s axe has dulled after scraping through so much armour in the battle. It’s more luck than skill that saved his neck. Undiscouraged, he doesn’t let go of the weapon. In fact, he tries to pull it towards him, and Petra is almost yanked off her mount, her wyvern shrieking. She locks her narrowed eyes with his, and Caspar feels his grip slip under the pressure of her gaze.

It’s the first time they’ve seen each other in five long years.

Petra’s piercing glare softens for a split second as she wrests her axe back.

“Caspar.”

“Uh… hi, Petra.” His voice cracks.

“I did not recognise you. You have grown bigger. And you are stronger.”

“I… I guess so—!” he grunts as he rams his entire body into the lithe body of the wyvern in an attempt to throw Petra off her saddle. Petra recovers easily, like she’s just been tapped on the shoulder instead of being bulldozed by all his might.

“What?!” Caspar reminds himself not to be awestruck. He should have expected Petra to be this good. She always was, even when they’d been students and trained together, always dodging his right hooks and haphazard swings like it’d been nothing. She was supposed to teach him how to do that, but then things got awkward between them because of his father (alive) and hers (dead), and Caspar never found chance to talk to her properly. He made it up to her by watching her back during missions, leaving the last bit of pie on the dining table for her: stuff that didn’t need them to talk. He’d been okay with that because he always thought he’d have the time to come up with the right thing to say—then Edelgard declared war on the church.

And as he watched the Empire soldiers trample across peaceful monastery grounds, Caspar made his choice.

Petra’s wyvern lands in front of him in one heavy motion crunching bones and metal beneath it. Petra stands atop the dragon’s back, chest rising and falling with heavy breaths, hair dripping with rain. “I will not be giving ease to you, Caspar. I fight for Brigid and the Empire!”

Caspar furrows his brow at this and shouts: “I fight for justice! For what’s right!”

Petra’s reply is a calculated axe throw that catches Caspar at an odd angle. The moment he lurches back to avoid it, he knows Petra’s got him in a bad spot. She brandishes a bow out from the red quiver on her back and lets loose an arrow that digs into his thigh. Caspar locks his knees to stop himself from crumpling. He bites his tongue through the pain and charges forward, tearing his axe through the wyvern’s right wing and immediately into its hind leg before it can react. As the wyvern screeches and tries to claw at him, he rolls underneath the beast, splashing into a puddle of rainwater and blood. It buys him just barely enough time to snap the arrow off his leg and catch his breath.

The next instant, the wyvern’s tail slams into his side and throws him onto the ground a few feet away, his axe sliding out of his grip and into the mud. Caspar curses as he props himself onto his good leg and faces Petra. She lets another arrow fly, but Caspar is ready, leaping out of the way and towards the direction of his axe. He picks it up and advances towards Petra once more, blinking the rain out of his eyes. Another arrow whistles through the air, and it ricochets off Caspar’s gauntlets.

Something’s not right. The only person in class who had better aim than Petra was Bernadetta. Caspar knows he’s strong, but he also knows he’s not fast enough, that in a match with Petra, she should’ve gotten an arrow in his chest by now. He should be dead by now. More than irritated, he’s confused. He couldn’t sleep yesterday because he’d dreaded this face-off, and Petra—Petra was lying. She was going easy on him for some reason.

“Petra!” Caspar yells. “You hate me, right?”

Petra presses her lips into a thin line and doesn’t give him a reply. She chooses to jump off her injured wyvern, and unsheathe a silver sword from her side. Unlike the soldiers around them, her armour is pristine and unmarked. She shifts into a familiar sword-fighting stance, one that Jeralt taught them: a defensive posture.

“My father killed yours.” Caspar urges her on, even as he feels his palms grow sweaty inside his gauntlets. “You’ve… you’ve been waiting for this day, haven’t you?”

Petra remains silent, watching his movements carefully. They’re circling one another, stepping over shattered weapons and bodies of troops whose crests have been covered by dust and muck. He can’t tell who’s from the Empire and who’s from the Kingdom now.

He’s always seen the world divided into two: the ones he’s supposed to fight, and the ones he’s supposed to protect. But the past years have muddled with his brain and now, he’s facing one of the people he’s never wanted to hurt. And yet, he knows his very existence must be an eyesore for Petra.

“Just do it already!” he yells, heart racing. “Stop making this harder than it should be!” He breaks into a mad dash towards her, ignoring the pain that shoots up his leg. Petra’s sword sings into a clumsy, wide arc and Caspar leaps to avoid it, lifting his axe as he breaks through her defenses.

He’s so close to her now he can see the colourful beads around her neck, the small braids in her hair. It’s different from how she used to dress, and it’s the closest they’ve been in ages. He hesitates before he realises it, and that split second is enough for Petra to raise her sword to meet his axe. They lock their weapons, and it becomes a battle of strength.

“Come on!” Caspar shouts even though their faces are only inches apart. “Just say you hate me!”

Petra manages to hold her sword up, even as her ankles dig deeper into the mud. “I do not hate you, Caspar. Not even now. It hurts my heart to do this.”

“Don’t—! Don’t say that right now!” Caspar shakes his head furiously and tenses his muscles. “Please, it’s easier if you hate me. Then all of this would make sense.”

“It is not making the sense. My heart has not been making the sense at all. I know I should be killing you, I must be killing you.” Petra continues to hold her sword up against his axe, straining but refusing to budge.

Caspar knew it was going to hurt, he just didn’t expect it to hurt this much. Before he can react, a loud, strangled cry breaks through the rain.

It’s Hubert’s voice.

Caspar recognises it. But he has never heard Hubert so emotional, so discomposed. It is followed by an Empire soldier’s hoarse, sobbing yell through the din of battle.

“The emperor has fallen!”

The last words the professor said before the battle began rise above the noise of Caspar’s thoughts: “Leave Edelgard to Dimitri and me.”

At this, sharp panic flashes across Petra’s eyes and she glances away for a moment. Caspar sees his chance. He lowers his axe and sweeps his good leg underneath her to knock her off balance. Without pausing, he throws a punch into her chest plate, hard enough to create a dent in the Empire’s crest. The force of the punch causes Petra to skid across the hard ground, sword clattering out of her hands and quiver breaking off her shoulder. In the background, he finally registers that his battalion has taken out most of the Empire's wyverns riders, but barely half of them are left alive. The skirmishes around them are standing down, waiting for the next order. 

Caspar is shaking as he stands over Petra, axe nearly slipping out of his grip. “Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?” he asks.

She sits up on her elbows. There is blood on her face and in her teeth, but Petra still manages to look dignified and poised. “Because... more than wanting to kill you, I am wanting to see you live.”

Caspar’s chest tightens. After all this time, he still hasn’t figured out what to say to her inevitable hatred, and now—to her gentle love.

They’re interrupted by another soldier’s voice: “King Dimitri orders all remaining Empire troops to be eliminated! Let none of them get away!” This one’s on their side. But why are there still sides? Haven’t they already won with Edelgard’s defeat?

As the Empire’s soldiers begin to retreat behind them and the Kingdom’s forces give chase, Petra does not get up to run. She watches them go, and lets one of the soldiers take her beat up wyvern in an attempt to escape.

She stares at his clenched fists, encased in metal and rust, eyes unblinking, and then tips her chin in resignation. “Go on, Caspar. I won’t be thinking any less of you.”

Shamir would give him an earful if she knew he’d let an enemy get a word out before landing the final blow. “That’s how they get you to lower your guard,” she hissed out the first time she saved him when he went easy on a bandit.

But Petra isn’t an enemy. Not now. Not since that summer afternoon in the training grounds, when she said: "Our parents had conflict, but we are not them."

His axe sinks into the ground as he falls onto his knees next to her.

“I’m not my father,” he whispers, more to himself than to her. “I… there’s no reason to kill you now. And I, I never wanted to either.” He removes his gauntlets and tries to rub the tears out of his eyes, but there is dirt on his hands and it stings.

He feels a cold touch pry his fingers off his face. Petra’s coarse hands cradle his, and he notices that both of their palms are covered in scars. “You have the kindest heart I know of, Caspar. And I know you will never be like your father, which is why I am hating the man who killed my father, but I have decided I cannot be hating you.”

Caspar identifies the exact moment an excruciating weight lifts from his shoulders. He wants to tell Petra everything that’s happened, how he lost sleep over this battle, tossed and turned about what he was going to say. Instead, all that comes out is a relieved: “Oh…”

The tattoo under her eye curves as she offers a small smile.

“My eyes tell me how much you have grown, but... my heart told me that you have not changed since I was last seeing you. I was right, to say that you should be living. You have been living marvellously.”

Caspar tilts his face upwards and lets the rain wash the dirt and tears out of his eyes. “I’m sorry, Petra.”

“Do not apologise, Caspar. I won’t apologise either. You made your choice, and I made mine.” She squeezes his hands in hers. “Now, we must live to bear the consequences of our choices together.”

“Together,” Caspar repeats, and doesn’t let go.


End file.
